Royal Free Hampstead trust is leading a procurement for the supply, implementation, hosting and ongoing support of Oracle's finance, procurement and projects system as part of a shared service arrangement.

Royal Free Hampstead is seeking the deal, worth up to £20m, with University College London (UCL) and has said that both trusts urgently need to replace their finance, procurement and projects systems by April 2013 or earlier. According to a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union, both Royal Free Hampstead trust and UCL are in the process of calling off Oracle licences from an existing framework agreement.

The notice says that it hopes to implement a "broadly common system" to support a shared service approach between both trusts, which also permits other NHS organisations to enter "call-off contracts" under the framework. Royal Free Hampstead and UCL hope the approach will result in savings.

"Royal Free Hampstead and UCL have been working actively together and have concluded that by implementing a broadly common system this would reduce overall system implementation and on-going support costs," says the notice.

"The expectation is that there will be a common set of standard processes that would be used as a basis for developing and operating a single solution which would form the basis of the broadly common solution to be operated under a shared services model for both organisations and provide a platform for a shared services solution for a wider body of NHS organisations."

As part of the six-year contract, the trusts also require licences for Oracle e-business suite and other Oracle related supplemental applications. The contract has a two year extension option.